“The very life of the colonial city was an illusion of memory.” Gabriel García Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera.

My first impression of Cartagena de Indias was of its doors. Some were closed, others open, but they were all beautiful, redolent of a deceased Spanish power that was ultimately unable to control the collision of races and cultures populating its New World and that still search for ways to share life together. In Cartagena, Beethoven’s Fate slams on doors with weighty brass knockers, ancient Janus opens both ways, while Márquez’s dogmatic Bishop in Love and Other Demons conducts his exorcisms with the eternal pounding of sinister fear.

I am grateful for a growing readership to my blog posts from around the world, which is approaching 150 countries and 14,000 readers. My blog is becoming a resource for many of you, for its new music reports, food ideas and travel, with almost every post being called up each month for reference. Thanks for reading!

Balancing the primary colors of Latin America, the endless pastels of Asia and the vintage black and white of Europe and the United States for our next Los Angeles International New Music Festival, my wife Jan and I are grounded when we are at home in California, a place that allows us to blend all of our loves from around the world.